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John Milne
Photo: Unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons15

John Milne

British geologist and mining engineer (1850–1913)

John Milne (30 December 1850 – 31 July 1913) was a British geologist and mining engineer who worked on a horizontal seismograph.2

From Wikipedia’s article on John Milne (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born Dec 30, 1850, died Jul 31, 1913.1

Companies

Early life and education

  • Date not recordedKing's College London3

Career

Occupation: engineer, inventor, geologist, seismologist.7

  • Date not recordedWorked at University of Tokyo4
  • Date not recordedWorked at Imperial College of Engineering4
  • Date not recordedFounded Seismological Society of Japan5
  • Date not recordedForeign government advisor in Meiji Japan6

Known for: seismology.8

Early career

In the summers of 1873 and 1874, following a recommendation by the Royal School of Mines, Milne was hired by Cyrus Field as a mining engineer to explore Newfoundland and Labrador in search of coal and mineral resources. During this time he also wrote papers on the interaction of ice and rock, and visited Funk Island, writing another paper on the newly extinct great auk. In December 1873 Milne accompanied Dr

Charles Tilstone Beke on an expedition to determine the true location of Mount Sinai in northwest Arabia. He took the opportunity to study the geology of the Sinai Peninsula and passed on a collection of fossils to the British Museum.

Career in Japan (1875–1895)

Milne was hired by the Meiji government of the Empire of Japan as a foreign advisor and professor of mining and geology at the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo from 8 March 1876, where he worked under Henry Dyer and with William Edward Ayrton and John Perry. Partly from a sense of adventure and partly because he suffered from seasickness, he travelled overland across Siberia taking three months to reach Tokyo.

In 1880, Sir Alfred Ewing, Thomas Gray, and John Milne, all British scientists working in Japan, began to study earthquakes following a very large tremor which struck the Yokohama area that year. They founded the Seismological Society of Japan (SSJ). The society funded the invention of seismographs to detect and measure the strength of earthquakes. Although all three men worked as a team on the invention and use of seismographs, John Milne is generally credited with the invention of the horizontal pendulum seismograph in 1880. Milne's instruments permitted him to detect different types of seismic waves, and estimate velocities. In addition, the foreign professors trained Japanese students including Seikei Sekiya who would become, at the Imperial University, the first professor of seismology at any university in the world and his successor, Fusakichi Omori who refined Milne's instruments to detect and record finer vibrations.

In 1881, he had married Tone Horikawa, daughter of Horikawa Noritsune in Hakodate.

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Career in England (1895–1913)

After a fire on 17 February 1895 destroyed his home, observatory, library, and many of his instruments, Milne resigned his posts on 20 June 1895 and returned to England with his Japanese wife, settling at Shide Hill House, Shide, on the Isle of Wight, where he continued his seismographic studies. He was made a professor emeritus of Tokyo Imperial University.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1887 and persuaded the Society to fund 20 earthquake observatories around the world, equipped with his horizontal pendulum seismographs. His network initially included seven in England, three in Russia, two in Canada (one in Toronto and one in Victoria, British Columbia), three on the east coast of the United States, and one in Antarctica, eventually growing to total forty worldwide. These stations sent their 'station registers' to Milne, where the data formed the basis of Milne's researches. For the next 20 years, Milne's seismological observatory was the world headquarters for earthquake seismology. In 1898, Milne (with W. K. Burton) published Earthquakes and Other Earth Movements, which came to be regarded as a classic textbook on earthquakes.

The need for international exchange of readings was soon recognised by Milne in his annual "Shide Circular Reports on Earthquakes" published from 1900 to 1912. This work was destined to develop in the International Seismological Summary being set up immediately after the First World War.

He delivered the Bakerian Lecture to the Royal Society in 1906 entitled Recent Advances in Seismology and was awarded their Royal Medal in 1908.

Milne died of Bright's disease on 31 July 1913 and, after a service in St. Paul's Church, Newport, was buried in the civic cemetery to the north of the church. His Japanese wife Tone returned to Japan in 1919 and died in 1926.

To mark the 100th anniversary of Milne's death, a public artwork has been commissioned for Little London near the harbour at Newport. The local Parish Council is providing a detailed explanatory board at Shide.

From Wikipedia’s article on John Milne (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Personal life

  • BornDec 30, 1850, Liverpool9
  • DiedJul 31, 1913, Shide10
  • CitizenshipUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland11

Awards

  • 1908Royal Medal12
  • 1906Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi12 13
  • 1906Royal Society Bakerian Medal12
  • 1894Lyell Medal12
  • Date not recordedFellow of the Royal Society12
  • Date not recordedOrder of the Rising Sun, 3rd class12

Sources

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